adoring, adored
by venusianeye
Summary: ink his laughter into your skin and wear him forever. [D/s, praise kink, emotional intimacy, sex]
1. adoring

"Er. Righto, then. The only rule, this time," Jake tells you, pushing his glasses up the ridge of his nose and giving you a very cheerful look, "is. No talking unless I ask you a question. Hang on, no, that's too vague, I know you - unless you're _answering_ a question. Got it?" As if for emphasis, he strokes a hand up the top of your right thigh, thumb kneading the taut muscles, and smiles.

He has you stretched out supine, completely naked. Your wrists are in leather cuffs, attached to the headboard in such a way that your arms are fully extended, flush to the sheets - you didn't get a good look at the apparatus, you're not sure what the precise setup is. Your ankles are more loosely attached to the posts at the foot - keeping your feet about six inches apart, unable to lift more than five inches or so off the bed. You find this interesting because you can't shut your thighs. It's highly probable that you're going to be getting some.

"... Got it," you say, after a moment, because that was technically a question. Wondering what Jake is going to do at this point strikes you as a boring activity, you're pretty sure he won't surprise you. At least you'll enjoy it. That's a given.

"Great," he says.

And then he just watches you, and you figure two can play at the waiting game, and you run through different kinds of rules in your head, amusing yourself. It's not like your position is uncomfortable. ... You can't remember what the first derivative of the arctangent looks like and it's bothering you. Your shoulder twitches. You can figure it out if you can just remember the equation. One over something. One over -

"You're very handsome when you think," Jake notes, and slides the hand on your thigh further up, petting your stomach. It breaks your concentration - the tactile buzz, his hands on your skin, calluses and the soft pressure of fingernails on some of the thinnest epithelium covering your body - your abdomen clenches, navel dipping. He smiles a little wider and pets firmer, until - you don't force them to, but the muscles he's touching relax anyway. Melting. "You get this look on your face when you retreat up there into the old noodle - very grave and impressive. Shows off your jawline."

A single darting kiss, pressed to that jawline. The afterimage on your nerves - the feeling that remains after his lips have left you - almost itches. You think you could map out its precise dimensions. If you wanted to.

... He could tell you weren't paying attention. You were supposed to be paying attention, you think - only he didn't tell you to, but you should have assumed -

"Shh," he whispers. His eyes are limned with something gentle - kindness, perhaps - as they travel across your face and inspect you. The noise skitters through your thoughts like dice rolling across a board, the weird soft sound of icicles falling into snow - shh, shh. "Hush now. You're very good."

He's still petting you, like you're an animal he's trying to gentle. You'd find something scathing to think about that if it didn't feel so good - contact is like a drug to you, his skin on your skin tugging at the tiny translucent hairs too fine to see, his warmth invading yours. Your spine arches a little, pressing your stomach into his hand, and he gently presses you back down. Into the softness of his blankets.

You aren't good. He should know that more than anyone.

"So very good," he repeats, gently running his knuckles under your chin, up and down your neck, the barest pressure. His other hand pets at your hips, which jitter beneath it until he presses firmer. "Exceptionally. I don't think you hear that nearly enough - you don't, actually. Look at you, minding me so well and keeping so still. What a beauty."

A faint warmth is blooming across your face but at the word _beauty_ a tender thing clenches in your chest. You hear yourself sigh - too late to cut back on it, you end up biting your lip, you _don't_ breathe audibly, you don't like hearing yourself breathe, but he's making you.

Jake cradles your jaw, slides his thumb over your mouth, tugs your lower lip out from between your teeth with the barest pressure. His eyes would be green, if green burned, if green was a bare electrical wire on your exposed skin.

You keep on breathing aloud. Throaty, weak noise. Contemptible. Surely.

Your muscles - intemittently - tremble after he strokes them, and if you focused yourself you could stop it, you're sure, but you don't want to. It feels too - pleasant isn't the word, but it's close.

"That really shouldn't surprise you, you daft peacock. You're a knockout," he insists, leaning closer, keeping his eyes on yours. "Thank my lucky stars I got to you first. I mean, crickey. Look at these gams," he adds, a low rumble in his voice, sliding his hands to the tops of your thighs again, kneading - you make a choked noise in the back of your throat. "You could kick a fellow halfway to the moon."

\- Which makes no fucking sense, but your skin prickles, embarrassed heat spreading through your sternum, pulse jumping. You don't realize you're biting your lip again until he bends close and brushes his nose against yours and sucks it out from between your teeth, so gentle it hurts. Your mouth falls open under his automatically. Tiny barely-audible cry.

"And you care so terribly," he says, right into your ear, breath warm, thumbs tracing the divots of your hipbones. Your mouth stays open, as he left it. "With your heart too large for your chest and your brain too big for your body. You rip yourself to pieces, caring so much."

Hips squirming - panting. He starts to suck on your neck, right where your pulse hammers, where it feels intense and overwhelming, and your wrists jump, straining in the cuffs. You can't see it at this angle but you're pretty sure you're sporting a semi. Jesus. You're so fucking needy, look at you, look at this pathetic display, if he had any sense he'd be revolted, he -

"If only I could have you like this all the time," he sighs, fingers trailing over your pectorals, massaging. You hiss, jumping, when he brushes your nipples. "Spoil you rotten."

You don't understand why he'd want to. You're lost in that statement. You, of all people to treat gently - of all people to be kind to, you who deserve it the least and warrant none of this tenderness -

"Dirk, do you want me to stop?" he asks you, kissing the furrows in your brow, fingers of one hand still worrying at your chest, his others carding gently through the hair at the nape of your neck. Mild concern.

Jake knows you well enough to know how he has to phrase the question. You wouldn't have been able to say you wanted him to keep going. Affirmative statements are like pulling teeth.

"... no," you say, and it comes out sounding broken despite your best attempt at steadiness. He trails kisses down your forehead, meets your mouth with his.

"Good," he says, an octave lower, thicker with - lust? want? desire? you can't quantify it mentally because it doesn't process, the concept of Jake wanting _this_ from you, but your flesh trembles and your blood burns and maybe that's all right. (Surely it's not.)

He kisses you deeper, answering your hunger with a kind of coaxing patience, forcing a slower tempo.

"I don't get to take my leisure with you very often," he murmurs into your mouth, after a long exploration of it. It sounds filthy, the way he says _take my leisure_, and he's only kissing you, petting you, it's absurd. He's pressed his torso flush to yours, hips beside, one leg hooked over your closest. You're rutting against air, no rhythm, no intent - reflexive, as waves of need flood your system. "I lose my wits. You're so awfully sublime, a fellow gets carried away."

(You aren't, you aren't.)

"You trust me so," he sighs, hands running the same path to your hips that they've run dozens of times already - you feel electric and simple, like all you need in the world is for him to stay right here and keep touching you, feeding you compliments a bit at a time so you can stand them - fuck, no, you can't need this, you can't _need_ it -

"You're safe," Jake says, so quietly it's almost difficult to catch above your pounding heart and ragged breathing.

(- you're only allowed to need air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, and all else is superfluous, _everything else will be taken away_ unless you can be good enough and you aren't - _nearly_ \- enough -)

He kisses your face where it's dripping wet. "You're safe, I've got you," he tells you again, and his voice is soft, the bed is soft, everything about this is gentle and tender and you don't know what to do when you aren't fighting for your life and maybe all you'll ever be is an almost-human thing alone above the water and _you weren't ever meant to feel anything this good._

When he slips his fingers further down your stomach, strokes you down there too, all you can do is bury your face in the crook of his neck and try to remember to breathe. It's too much. It's bewildering, it doesn't hurt at all and it's too - you can't pull your knees to your chest and hide, you can't jerk away, it's only pleasure, but -

"Perfect," Jake murmurs into your skin - coaxing your face out to kiss your forehead, kiss your lips, gaze at you like he's totally besotted, the lenses of his glasses slightly fogged. "So good for me."

And it's always easier on you when it hurts, pain is the salt that justifies the sweetness, but maybe this wasn't supposed to be easy. You're bound at wrists and ankles but your body still tries to thrash. He holds you closer, shushes and croons, tells you how good you are, praises you for trying so hard, for doing so well. You're incoherent.

The pleasure plateaus, coiling below the threshold of release like a spring.

Jake smiles at you and slides his free arm beneath your neck, cradling your skull. You meet his eyes through a haze. You can't stop trembling.

Kisses your temple. Tells you, "It's okay, Dirk."

(Maybe it is, if he says so.)

You shut your eyes, and believe him.


	2. adored

no one means what they say.

you've learned that.

it didn't make sense to you that humans would be duplicitous or omit the truth or break promises, you came into the world like an animal in your sincerity and if you took refuge in a barricade of sarcasm perhaps this was because it broke your heart to discover that people lied.

but he says what he means.

and maybe it's enough that he says what he means.

maybe there is room for you two, here, after the end of the world.

drifting along waiting to have a purpose again. waiting to mean something. waiting for your existence to seem solid, for the formless void to coalesce.

his hands are warm, and real.

if he touches you enough, maybe you'll be warm, too.

ah.

ah, like the breath taken in, breaking the surface of the water, when you thought you might not make it.

ah -

his familiar beloved body between your slack spread legs, arched over you on the bed. flat on your back.

ah -

there's a good boy, jake whispers and his stubble scratches against your neck and he keeps gently stroking his fingers inside you. you feel drunk and dizzy. your own fingers are digging into his back because is is absolutely necessary that he stay right here and never go. he keeps adding lube and worming a little deeper, pressing against the sides, working you open.

much, much slower than you usually do it. like it's worth it, to him, to take the time - like he gets something out of it. like you're precious.

ah -

christ on a cracker, jake mumbles, kissing the side of your neck and over your throat and up to your lips. he keeps looking at you. it's nice. the way he looks at you, you feel warmer, you feel like you're the most important thing in the world to him.

ah -

let me do - this part - all the time, all right? he murmurs, desperately, face inches from yours. he slides his fingers a little further in, and then pushes a little firmer, until he's squelching his palm against your skin. grinding and rubbing. you're shivering, but you aren't cold. there's sparks running up your spine, the feeling of having something hot and moving inside you, dense gelatin pleasure. all right, love?

\- yeah, you agree, slurring your speech.

yeah? he echoes, licking the word out of your mouth. you're buzzing with something. dunno what. feels good. he twists his fingers a little and you squirm.

mm - yeaaah, you say again, voice wavering. his eyes get darker when you make noise for him. you like to watch his pupils blow out. _yeah -_

_god,_ you're gorgeous, jake whispers, fervent. it sinks into your mind like a pill dissolving in water, coloring the liquid, staining you pretty. if you're gorgeous - he's the only one who needs to think you are. and he does. he does, he does.

ah -

toes and fingers curling. uncurling. clutching him, sweaty palms, grip weak. a sweet and heavy feeling. like you're composed of fog and he's some chemical in the air, suffusing you. he gently pushes your hair off your damp forehead while rocking his palm against the vulnerable arch of your pubic bone, everything wet and sweet and gentle. it's like -

it's like someone taking care of you. someone who loves you.

tugging at his shoulders you kiss him so greedily, sucking his tongue into your mouth, bruising your lips against his. you don't think you'll ever get enough of the way he kisses back.

jesus christmas - could you pull your knees up for me? pet? jake asks, like he's gulping for air, torso trembling. he's so solid, and real, and you don't notice anything else in the world when he's bent over you like this. you think he's your ceiling. your sky.

mmh - yeah.

you pull them up for him and wait, hands behind your knees, breathing softly through your mouth.

he exhales through his teeth.

the way jake looks at you - your vanity purrs, pride jacked up all the way to eleven. you can see between his legs. yeah, you're his darling clementine, all right. apple of his eye. you lick your lips - tender, from all the kisses - and keep waiting.

that's good, dirk, he tells you finally, crooking his finger under your chin, cradling your face. you're _so very good._

he says it like he wants to drink you up and like he's in awe of you. your heart is racing. fresh heat blooms through your skin, your face, your chest. the moment feels sacred.

and jake's wide smile is so simple and kind that something shatters inside you - some last, paper-thin barrier against the sunlight pouring in.

god, but he takes your breath away.

and then he fucks his fingers into you hard, his rhythm brisk.

_ah -_

doesn't hurt - not much would after all that prep - but he can reach deeper at this angle, it's -

you're making these whimpering noises, you can barely recognize the sounds coming out of your throat.

_fuck_, jake -

sweetheart, he croons, unrelenting, crooking his fingers as he drags them out - you choke on a gasp and grit your teeth for lack of something to bite. _ darling dove._

you are present and vibrating in every single livid cell of your body, and it is overwhelming the way hurricanes are overwhelming, how you are so terribly alive.

how he makes it so good.

you wish you could share it.

tell me what you want, he whispers, watching you fall to pieces by the minute. his eyes are melting pools, his body drips hot saltwater as you convulse and tremble. maybe you're both burning.

jake -

tell me. (not commanding, only entreating, and maybe that's why you obey him so easy, because he never expects you to. look how tame you are.)

_jake -_

you wanna come like this, baby?

his voice is drenched in coaxing, saturated syrup, almost too much for you. he eases up a little, slowing his fingers so you can draw breath. you can't quite think straight through the riot - nerve endings sparking, neurons misfiring.

too boneless with pleasure to sit up but you reach for his dick anyway, vision blurry.

\- wanna make you feel good, you slur out, a thick needy drawl.

jake makes a noise like he's choking on something. bats your hand aside - tugs his fingers out of you - you hiss, startled.

he breathes hard, gripping your thighs with both hands, and then meets your eyes again. you blink. he squeezes. reassurance.

you want my dick, baby? jake asks you gently, kissing the side of your face. he seems very amused. you're not sure why.

yeah, you murmur, impatient. toes curl. vexed.

his eyes are very soft.

then _let me see to it,_ he tells you almost-laughing, and kisses you hard, nipping at your lower lip.

oh! oh -

irritation gone, you're relieved. slightly embarrassed by yourself - grabby, much? but it's okay, he doesn't mind, he_ thinks it's cute_, he whispers into your skin.

don't need to hold your knees up - he hooks your legs over his shoulders, warm burn in your hamstrings. your hands are lying palms-up on the bed, beside your head - he tucks one of the pillows under your hips and then takes one of them, lacing your fingers with his.

all right, love? he murmurs, checking your face, kissing the tip of your nose.

yeah - yes please, you tell him. he has the nicest laugh.

slips two fingers back inside and spreads you open, easily, to guide the head in. you're so relaxed - you feel a dark red buzz in the base of your spine at the squelching noise it makes, let your mouth drop open for air.

ah -

he breaches you in one slow, measured slide.

_ahhh -_

and then holds your other hand like the first, interlocked fingers, dovetailed knuckles. rubs his thumb over your bones, nuzzles his face against your damp forehead. his body has a fine tremor running through it - like a wire, tensile, strength held in reserve, you can't help but admire him.

breathe, he reminds you.

you nod.

jake fucks into you at the same generous tempo he was keeping earlier, and it's _really hot_, you feel stretched around him, like he's hollowed out a place inside you for himself. if you relax your mind and bones and let his movements swallow you, you think you can feel his pulse where your body clutches his. his heartbeat, jumping and racing. you do this to him.

beautiful, dirk, he pants out.

submerged in something liquid-warm. mind skipping tracks, going offline. electric sparks dancing through your pelvis, trailing constellations through your nerves. lost in a galaxy. jake strung the stars for you, you think, in a moment of unlucid poetry. squeeze his fingers harder. turn your head, kiss his thumb.

_there's a good boy,_ jake croons, sounding punch-drunk and delirious, pistoning harder. he sounds happy. you're pretty sure you're smiling like a fool but you're too warm and floating, too detached from your body's editorial processes to know. curl your ankles together behind his neck. coax him closer, for kissing. shiver all over, without stopping.

i love you, i love you, you tell him on repeat, and he gives you more and more, until you're lost in it.

it's so good you wish it could go on forever - this oasis in your brain where everything is saturated with him, a place where even the idea of pain can't enter.

_oh, darling,_ jake says, kissing sweat off your brow, wide eyes fixed on your face, and you orgasm.

a hard jolt, like a stone skipping across water - still flying, after, one high cresting arc. vision whiting out. there are noises spilling out from between your lips and you can't parse them, don't know what they mean, only that they are for him.

you think he comes too, but you're not quite back yet when it happens - it registers as after-images, aftersounds, delayed tactile reactions. his voice - weary/sated/in-love-with-you, velvet friction.

brisk hands, toweling off the damp cold spots on your stomach, between your legs.

body settled beside yours, gathering you into it. you feel/hear yourself exhale and it's the best breath you've ever let out of your lungs.

_\- you did so well_, jake said into your ear a minute or two ago.

his hands are warm, and real.

they're stroking the length of your back, your hair, whatever he can reach.

you blink, several times.

(and he's touching you, so you're real too. for sure.)

welcome back, jake whispers to you, bumping his nose against yours. you're still fuzzy at the edges, but he's right, you're here. on the bed, in his arms, tangled up in him and the bedsheet - most of your sweat has dried but you can still smell him all over you, and you savor it, inhaling carefully. he waits, observing.

... hi. (exhausted. you don't know if you want to shower or sleep first.)

hi. ... i love you, jake says, once he's sure you can understand english. your heart skips.

(people lie, but jake always says what he means, so it's true.)

ah.

ah, the kind of breath a drowning man gives out when he's safe from shipwreck, a salvaged air from salvaged lungs.

you tuck your head under his chin, and let him tow you gently in to shore.


	3. adoration

Who cherishes you, who holds you close at night, who lays his lips on each and every one of your seashell fingernails and tells you _sweet dreams?_ 1\. A warmth you knew you wanted before you knew what it was. 2. The boy you fell in love with before you understood the name for the feeling.

(Monday morning: you lay in bed kissing for an hour and a half after waking up. He tells you you're beautiful. He tells you this every morning. You should be used to it by now. You aren't.)

To you Jake is an expanding list of things, matrices of data ever-growing, ever-lovelier. Little by little, the loneliness in your bones ebbs away. Little by little, you are no longer discretely "Dirk Strider", but half of a two-personed life. He won't go away from you, now, even if he goes. He won't stop being a part of you even if he leaves you. It is more dear to you than your own life, and more terrifying than dying ever could be.

(Tuesday afternoon: nothing to do for the rest of the day. You curl on top of him on the couch and end up fucking the way two bodies, compelled by gravitational force, must always collide. He is delighted. You are warm, and happy.)

You are in some way mutilated by his love for you. It transforms you into something different, and you have forgotten what it was like to live without it. Everything about him is kind and good and tender towards you, and perhaps this is what grieves you the most: he changes you just by existing, and you don't have any reason to stop him.

(Wednesday, during lunch: he feeds you by hand from his plate, bite sized pieces. You suck his fingers clean, and then he props you up on the table and sucks you filthy. It surprises you to discover, blushing and stammering with your fingers in his hair, that you will never develop an immunity to his smile, the way he bites at his lower lip and then runs his tongue over it.)

There will always be a whisper in the back of your thoughts, urgent and terrified, telling you to _burn everything down and run while you still can._ Especially when you're happy. Especially when you are content. The laws of give and take, equal and opposite reaction, must always hold true: the more you trust him the more vulnerable you will become to betrayal. You know this fact like you know the weight of your sword, just by holding it. It's just - at some point it began not to matter anymore, and you cannot retrace your steps.

(Thursday, evening, after watching Transformers again. You were squirming between his thighs, leaning back against his chest, being a provocative smartass. It was easy for him to pick you up and lower you onto his dick, easy for him to suck hickeys on your neck like a possessive teenager - because of the position. But it was difficult for you to climax without seeing his face, you told him afterwards, and he kissed you and said_ oh, me too, let's not do that one again, shall we?_ You told him: _maybe in front of a mirror._ The look on his face was superb.)

Maybe you're a fool. Maybe you're Icarus, and he's your sun.

These anxieties surface less and less over time, the longer he stays, the deeper you fall for him, the further you travel from the place and time in which you were alone. Before Jake, and After Jake.

You have an innate distrust of fairy-tale endings. It is a peculiar irony of your fate that Jake is made of them.

Friday night after Roxy and Jane have gone home, empty pizza boxes in the cardboard recycling bin, he's been massaging your back for over an hour. At some point you slipped halfway into that strange plane of consciousness, the state of mind Jake likes to induce in you - you don't know what to call it, but it's similar to how it feels to stop thinking and let your hands write lines of code, how it feels to give over to something pure and automatic. You'd like to keep going, let him put you under. You'd like to sink all the way down.

"I want you," you tell him, kissing his neck, touching him wherever you can reach. "I really, really do."

"Shall we mosey on over to the bedroom, then?" Jake suggests, palming your ass, semi-frantic with arousal. Your body thrums with satisfaction at the thick rasp in his voice, the way his heart is racing under his skin. Yes. You give this to him.

"Will you_ fuck me_ if we go to the bedroom?" you counter, grinding down into his lap, nibbling on his ear. You can't contain your grin, pleased with yourself for being awful.

"- Dirk, you utter pest, that is_ not cricket_," Jake groans, and you have no idea what that means but you really approve of the way he surges and lifts you up off the couch with him. You squeeze his waist with your thighs and wrap your arms around his shoulders and Jake doesn't falter at all, because he's sturdier than concrete (and just as hard, now, thanks to you.)

The raw strength of his body makes you dizzy with lust, every step he takes echoing through you like stray voltage from a bare wire. It's almost - not quite enough, but - almost.

You're itching for something you can't name, something to get you the rest of the way. "I want -" you begin, and have to stop, frustrated, because you don't know. How can you not know? "I want -"

"Tell me," Jake croons, nudging the bedroom door shut with his heel, his grin pressed into your sternum, his hands squeezing hard enough to almost-hurt.

And what do you want, really?

He spills onto the bed backwards, letting you bounce on his lap for a moment, and you shudder from the base of your spine to the nape of your neck, shutting your eyes. Vivid mental images flutter through your mind at impossible speeds. He'll give you whatever you ask for, you know he will. He always does. Wanting things is counter-instinctive, for you, but he offers up an abundance, addicts you a milimeter at a time to his touches, makes it easy.

There's too much you could take - they say Persephone only ate six seeds but it was enough to condemn her and you - you've devoured so much of him you'll never escape. It's thrilling and terrible.

"I want..."

"Yes?" Jake murmurs, a note of pleading in his low whisper, dropping to the bottom of your stomach like a bullet falling through water. His face is pressed against your neck, breath warm and fluttering against your skin. His body is solid and whole and smells like him, and he's wrapped his arms around your waist to cradle the basket of your ribcage like it holds everything dear in the universe, and he is perfect, and you are already too hungry for him to think clearly.

"You can say it," Jake tells you, pressing an encouraging kiss to your jugular vein. "It's all right. Go ahead."

Maybe it's only because he thinks you can voice your desires that it's possible at all, but you don't mind not knowing.

"I want you to not be wearing clothes," you begin, tracing circles into his muscles. "And I want you to make all the noises you make, and say the things you say and look at me the way you do, and keep touching me, and make my brain stop thinking complete thoughts, like when we have the, the kind of sex we had last Sunday, that kind. That's what I want."

"Mmm," Jake sighs, squeezing you tighter, like he appreciates the meandering attempt as much as he would have appreciated a clear-cut answer, sugar dissolving on your tongue. "Last Sunday."

"Yeah."

"That was a nice day."

"Yeah," you agree. He's stroking the shudders out of your spine, again. You feel limp - like your arousal is a separate tension, something you don't have to worry about, he'll take care of it. "I liked it. A lot."

"What parts were the best?"

You consider. "... All of them."

He's beautiful when he laughs. It makes your heart ache. "All right, then, darling," he tells you, and begins to strip you both naked. "I'll just play it by ear."

You relax, lulled by the motion of his hands, the way he breathes so steady, the way his chest rises and falls.

Jake spends far too much time prying you open, sliding his fingers into you, making you slippery with lube. It's messy. You don't mind, though. You aren't even bored. He likes it so much, it's nice, the way he watches you and gets lost. You rest your forehead against his, and inhale the way he stares like you're the most important thing in the world.

He arranges you on your knees, straddling his lap, facing him. He's propped up against the headboard - fingers still twisting and rubbing against your insides, until you whine, under your breath. "Jake -"

"I've got you," he tells you, kissing you slow and languid, dragging your tongue out of your mouth. He does. He's got you, you're okay. The bliss sinks through you like a slow-acting neurotoxin might; a steady slow progression of involuntary relaxation, the loss of your focus, a weakness you couldn't abide if it weren't Jake inflicting it. It's him, though. He's the one who brings you to this.

"I'm ready," you tell him.

"I know," he says, kissing you again. Your fingers curl loosely in his hair. "You're enchanting."

You smile, rocking your body's weight from one knee to the other. Faint regret. Flushed vanity. "I'm a pest."

"That too," Jake concedes, and releases your waist to guide the head of his erection into you, two fingers holding you open. Careful. Kind.

" - _Jesus_ Mary Joseph," he blurts out when you drop onto him, your spine going rigid at the shock.

" - mmhm," you hum, shivering. Your eyes are wide open, hands gripping his hair too tight. The burn in your lower body is so good - just the right amount of hurt to bring out the full flavor of the pleasure, violent in its intensity like being struck by lightning. "... Sorry. More."

He bites into your neck and your head rolls to the side to welcome it, hips shuddering in his grip.

"Please," you add, when he makes you wait there. His thumbs spasm, digging into your stomach.

"Yes. Soon," he promises, licking at the bite, voice still shaking. "Count to ten."

Mentally you begin. One, two, three, four, five, six -

His arms flex like steel cords in the lamplight as he drags you up a few inches and then yanks back down, lifting his hips in tandem.

"-_seven_," you moan, dazed.

"There we are," Jake says, voice thick with amusement.

He does it again, and again, and again, until you are no longer counting aloud, but simply making noise: the soft hitch when he thrusts up into you, shaking your whole body, reducing your total capacity for air, and the low moan of loss when he pulls you up and slides out. You probably couldn't find your balance if you tried. But you don't need to balance yourself. He's doing that for you.

The things he whispers into your throat are almost too much to bear, but with every pull back down a few more of them force their way into the lake of your mind, spreading through the water. _Love you. Perfect. Lovely._ You breathe them in in gulps, gasping air, surrounded by him on all sides. His touch, his scent, the sight and sound of him, the taste of his tongue on yours. You don't know at what angle you are to the bed; you can't collect a point of reference, Jake drowns them all out.

He is the only thing left to hold.

\- that's it, that's what you wanted.

Nothing exists, here, in this moment, but you-and-Jake. The relief of solipsism. The balm of not having anything else to pick apart or consider - of not even having the option, not being able to run your mind into the ground because your mind is off the tracks altogether. In his grip. Dangerous, but safe.

You're slurring out his name and mangled endearments, sweet and painful and true, but that's a dim echo compared to his voice telling you he loves you, how good you are, how much he wants you. A drug in your bloodstream. The sole axiom of your universe - the only requirement. You don't know anything else anymore.

"- yes, love, of course you can," Jake is telling you, moving your bodies with only his hips so he can reach between you and touch with his fingertips. It's white-hot iron. You're certain you can feel every distinct line of his fingerprints. You think you're falling to pieces. You're panting so hard it almost hurts.

"Go ahead," you hear, and a thing in the pit of your stomach listens.

The white fades from your vision like the vanishing fog that follows gods, or morning. You're resting in his lap, still - he's pulled out of you, he's just holding you and humming. It is in many ways something you barely believe to be real: who's holding you, who loves you, who tells you you're perfect. Surrounded by evidence, however, you can only marvel at him.

"I love you," you tell him, because you need to say it aloud.

"I know," Jake affirms; accepting every fragment of you, even this. In your blissful daze he's a mystery. How does he manage it? Answers drift to the surface - not ones you would have produced on your own, but ones he has taught you to think. These, and his limbs, cradle you to a state of deeper rest.

1\. He loves you, in spite of everything and because of it.

2\. The simple fact that he feels as much and as violently as you do.

"I love you," he murmurs into your skin when he thinks you're already asleep.

(Tomorrow: you will wake up, still tangled in his limbs, sweet and doe-eyed with sleep, and he will run his fingers through your hair and press his lips to yours and tell you _good morning._)


	4. adornment

Jake kisses a ring around your neck almost every day and you suspect it's all for the way you shiver; but when you ask him in a moment of teasing whence came such dotage, whither such devotion, he tells you _darling I will never forget the day you severed it._

You fall mute when he tosses that sentence out. His hands are still, folded together on the tabletop. Coffee cooling in the "#1 GRANDAD" mug, his eyeglasses are smudged on one lens, from pushing them up his nose when he was too tired to aim for the bridge. Tender bitemarks are soft red on your clavicles, fading pink in the sunlight. Matter-of-fact. Just another Tuesday.

Guilt swells against your lungs because you aren't sorry. You aren't sorry at all. He's alive, and given a choice between saving the people you care about and saving yourself, you know what you'll choose one hundred percent of the time, no margin of error.

"... I can't promise you I won't make that kind of decision again," you tell him, because you expect that Jake will ask you for that, and you know in a weary way that it's too much.

You predict that Jake will order you not to throw your life away, tell you he doesn't want that kind of rescue, tell you the cost is intolerable. So you think you should warn him in advance that, left to your own devices, you'd do it again. Give him ample warning. Pre-empt the request. You may be somewhat inhuman but even a robot can understand the rules of fair play.

Instead of trying to extort false promises he leans across your breakfast and kisses your eyes shut.

Soft brush of lips against the delicate skin of your eyelids; lingering pressure, the danger-thrill of having teeth so close to something so vulnerable. The scent of his body. A sliver of tenderness that cuts into your thoughts and scatters them, like severing balloon strings.

When you blink he is still there, forehead not-quite-touching your own. His eyes are lanterns, and you are a moth.

"It's never going to be your decision again, Dirk," he tells you, firm and simple. As if it's a normal thing to say.

Your torso trembles, ribcage juttering. The last spasm of the urge to flee? The urge to dissolve and beg for mercy?

"Your neck is mine, now. Finish your cereal," Jake says, and opens up the newspaper to the classified section, pondering a lawnmower as he sits back down.

Time is flowing in unsteady slow motion, a painful halting limp.

He's on the leafblowers when he raises his eyebrows without looking up and remarks, "I don't hear any eating."

Fingers shake as you lift the spoon to your mouth and let the cereal scrape your palate, lips closing around the food. The metal clinks against the side of the bowl when you set the utensil back down; he hums, pleased, and turns the page to skim over used cars. The potted spider plant above the sink is glowing soft-emerald in the morning sunlight. He's watered it already.

You fold your hands in your lap in a posture that means _I'm obeying you, I'm not resisting;_ palms skyward, grip loose.

You are numb, dislocated.

Transubstantiation. _This is my blood you drink, this is my body you eat._ Lucky Charms aren't holy wafers by a long fucking shot, but he bought them for you and he poured your bowl for you and he just told you to eat, you think that's enough to make it a little eucharistic. A little like surrendering to the enemy (the higher) power.

Your neck is his? Your mouth is his, your teeth, your tongue, every organ and every bone. What were you thinking? You weren't. And now look at you.

(After all this time - you don't know if you have the capacity to leave him, anymore, and you rather think not. After drinking and eating and perhaps drowning in the endless manna of Jake's love for you, letting yourself be tamed like a feral thing gentled to the bridle and bit, the idea of leaving is inconceivable. You can't imagine step one. You don't know how to cut and run anymore; it's like a song you heard once in childhood, remembered only in piecewise scraps. The ascetic cannot return to the wilderness; he has lost the calluses on his feet and hands, he can no longer stray freely.)

Jake looks up when he doesn't hear you take another spoonful, half-grinning, like he's about to tease you some more for dragging your feet. The expression falls away when he sees you. Reshapes into something else, something vivid and bright.

(And you knew it was happening, you allowed it to happen, you let him wear down your sharp edges as gently as water wearing away a stone. You let him burn the escape ladder, let him throw away the key to your chains. So what happens now, if he decides he doesn't love you anymore?)

"Dirk?" Tentative. Probing.

(What will happen when he discards you, now that you have lost all means to defend yourself and no longer know how to survive without him?)

"Dirk." Coaxing.

You let his voice drag you back to the kitchen table. Your eyes locate him pinned against the flat two-dimensional world unfurling around your head. Reality is compressed, dizzying. Nothing is distinct, it's a jumble of lines and colors. Spatial reasoning is shot. Audiovisual data is stacking up, all incomprehensible static.

But Jake is here, and he is real.

And he doesn't know why you can't eat your Lucky Charms.

He is waiting for you to tell him what's wrong.

(You don't know what you'll do if someday he doesn't want you anymore. It's a blank space in your imagination. A complete unknown. To a tactician this ought to raise alarm. This, alone, should be reason enough to run like hell, as far and as fast as you can, until you're far enough to recover whatever pieces he's left untouched and rebuild yourself. A fistful of pebbles, clutched tight. The last few bits and pieces of your resistance.)

"Come back down to me, love," Jake murmurs. He's laced his fingers together, as he cannot reach yours; thumbs rubbing against his knuckles, the unconscious desire to soothe you.

Only ever sweet and gentle.

You anchor yourself on his eyes, green as fire, green as your undoing.

With careful attention he watches you chew, and swallow.

In the end -

(- and in the end they are only pebbles. As you let them go you forget, almost immediately, why you ever wanted to keep them; why you ever guarded any portion of yourself so jealously, as if by doing so you could stop the tide.)

\- in the end, once you pass through the fire you will have only your faith in him, and you understand that it is the nature of your love for him that it will burn up everything else. There's nothing certain about human beings, nothing certain in probability, and if you insist on waiting for a guarantee you're never going to get it. Faith will have to be enough.

Besides, it's too late to fight.

You have already surrendered. Eons and universes ago.

"I'm okay," you say, because he's worried, and pick up your spoon. "Sorry."

"Not at all," Jake demurs, watching you eat with a banked heat in his gaze. He enjoys the fact that you're doing what he told you to do, even if it took you an unreasonable amount of time and even if it's something absurdly simple. He'd probably get a kick out of you breathing, if he told you to do it. Jake English is not a hard man to please. "I ought to be apologizing to you. It was hardly polite breakfast conversation."

"Can you stay home today?" you ask, between bites. The request falls out of your mouth unplanned.

Jake pauses. He's still watching you, watching your free hand trace the bruises he sucked into your neckline. You notice yourself doing it after he does, and your fingers halt, caught between the urge to hide and the pleasure of being admired.

"Well. Sure. I'll phone up, tell them I won't be in," he murmurs. Takes a long, last swig of his coffee. Licks his lips.

"Were you doing something important?" you murmur back. Still lightheaded. Still a little unsteady. Faint note of regret.

He leans back in his chair, scratching at his stubble in a thoughtful way. "Clearing up brush in the park - storm last Saturday knocked a few big branches loose. Nothing special," Jake assures you. Pauses. Gives you a mock-stern look. "... It isn't your job to judge that, Dirk," he reminds you. You feel your pulse jump. "It's mine."

"... Yeah," you agree.

"It's awfully considerate, but you aren't to think about my to-do list before you decide to go ahead and tell me you want something." Earnest. Flustered.

"Yes, Jake," you say, setting your spoon into your empty bowl in a five o'clock position. His voice washes over you like liquid over sand, dissolving structure, smoothing you out. You want him to keep talking so you can keep agreeing with him. Saying yes feels pleasant.

His hands settle on your shoulders, kneading. The tingle of blood through stiff muscle, the release of tension - you breathe out hard, and lean back into his touch.

"Tell me what you're thinking," he says.

Thinking is so unpleasant, you'd rather be offline. Your brow wrinkles. He snickers, quietly.

"Come on, then," he says, leaning down to brush his lips against the crown of your head. "Give it a go."

It takes a moment or two to collect yourself.

"... That I should give in," you tell him.

"To ...?"

"You." His thumbs keep kneading circles at the nape of your neck. Letting you talk. "You make this so good it's - it's too hard to fight and it's a losing battle. I don't want to keep holding back."

"I don't mind," Jake tells you. "The dragging it out of you bit. You rail as hard as you can not to be duped into believing the best of things. A fellow doesn't mind being right all the time." Light and easy. A summer smile in his tone. Like cool water down your throat. "And I _like_ taking care of you, Dirk."

You are softer and softer beneath his touch, malleable as clay. "I don't want to fight anymore."

"Me, you mean?"

"Yeah... No. Myself, too. I'm so fucking difficult, it's -" You struggle to put your frustration into words. "I don't know how you put up with me." True, although you imagine the sex helps.

"Giving yourself a lot of credit there, aren't you, chickadee." His fingers card through your hair, soothing and repetitive.

"I don't know what I'm going to do when you get sick of me." It falls from your mouth with a simple, inevitable weight; the ball rolling away down the incline, compelled by gravity.

His fingers stop.

"I don't want to ruin this," you tell him. "I don't want to make this stop working. But I'm. I'm me, and I won't blame you if you eventually just want me to leave." Palms up. Arms open. You have run out of answers, and defenses.

Jake is quiet for a long time, but his hands stay where they are. You wait in the eye of the hurricane.

* * *

It's a good ten minutes before he clears his throat.

"... Leaving isn't an option," he tells you, slow and even. "Scratch that off the list altogether. Don't bring it up again."

"For me or for you?" you ask, head bowed, because you can't help it. His fingers twitch.

_"Dirk."_

"Yes?"

His vocal cords are taut with strain. "You're very stupid, love."

"I'm -?"

His arms are coiled around your shoulders, his hand cradling the side of your face; his skin lies flush to yours, his breath fervent and hot against your ear. The strength of his grip is gentle and wholly unyielding. You barely had time to flinch before his forearms locked down. "You really think that in my right mind, possessed of all my faculties, I'd just let you leave?"

Your mouth is open, but you have nothing to say to that.

"Lord almighty. You wholesale idiot."

His hand runs lower, cupping your jaw, thumb sliding between your teeth so you can't close your mouth. You make an odd, startled cry; he hushes you, petting your hair again, pressing kisses to your temple.

"You aren't getting rid of me so easily," he hisses. The same soft cry rises from the back of your throat like a wounded bird. You don't want to get rid of him, you _don't._ You want the opposite. "And if the devil nicks my soul and yanks my grey stuff out through my ears - if I ever lead you to believe I don't love you -" (he is holding you by your throat, he has wrapped his fingers across your adam's apple, a grip so firm it reduces your breath to gasps; his own voice is choked and thick with hurt) " - if Hades freezes and lobsters fly and that _ever_ happens - Dirk, you fool, _you won't be leaving anything important_."

Only your anguished breath interrupts the ensuing silence.

His grip relaxes into a soft, slow massage, modulating your panting. You can't see through the water in your eyes. You can't press back into his chest hard enough, or yield enough of yourself to his hold.

"You won't go?" you hear yourself entreat, and are only a little ashamed of how wretched you sound, how pathetic with need. Your hands are wrapped around his wrists - not to pull them away, but to keep them there. "You won't let me go?"

"Never."

Spoken like the word of God, a certainty so powerful it establishes the laws of nature by being uttered.

He is hope incarnate. And you believe him.

Your neck is his forever: the choice to die has been stripped from you.

You exhale, and some lingering, stale darkness leaves your lungs.

His grip relaxes, more of an embrace now, his hands petting your skin, soothing circles. You swallow, and discover he hasn't hurt you at all. The tingling in your limbs, your liquid spine, your painless body are all whole and intact. (Always gentle with you. Always kind.)

"I needed you to tell me," you tell him, eyes shut. Soft red light glows through the lids as your chin rises and brings your face into a sunbeam. He's petting your stomach, hands beneath your shirt. "I _can't_ \- I can't _leave_. Not anymore. That's why."

Because he's pressed so tightly to you, you feel every shudder through your skin. Your admission knocks the last of his anger out of him; now he is only holding you like he's afraid to let go. It occurs to you that you aren't the only one who's terrified of being left alone, and that you've scared him. For that, you're sorry. He knows you never meant to.

"... Can I make you feel better?" you ask, stroking the arms that hold you. Jake makes a sort of whuffing noise into your hair and leans down on you hard, for a moment. Telling you he's okay by exhibiting play behavior. It makes you smile. You're human enough to feel comforted.

"Go shower," he tells you, quiet and muffled, "and wait for me in bed."

Ah. Your heart skips a beat. You believe it always will.

"Okay," you tell him, and kiss the joints of his thumbs before letting him untangle himself.

* * *

On your stomach, legs spread, hands clutching a pillow to your mouth.

Jake licks you until you're wet and helpless and soft, muffled cries echoing against the walls; when you're slick enough he holds you splayed with his fingers and opens you up more with his tongue. Running it around the rim, kissing your hole the way he kisses your mouth.

You can't see straight. You can't think. It burns and it's too much and it's not enough, and it's awful and you don't want him to stop. Shameful-hot, filthy and embarrassing and selfish. Because he isn't getting anything out of it. If he thought of doing this, it was only for you. You wanted to give him something and instead -

You're on your knees, hips canted up, head down. Sweat drips down your lower back towards your neck, down your limbs. He tells you you're _so good, so good for me, sweetheart,_ and presses his lips close and sucks. It's difficult not to lurch away, and equally difficult not to squirm back, gasping - it's intense, almost too much. The small mewling noises coming from your throat ramp up in volume.

Jake strokes your glutes, thighs, back, whatever he can reach, as if he's trying to calm you down like a skittish animal, but his mouth doesn't let up at all. If he stops to breathe hard against your skin, to call you his _baby, sugardoll, pretty thing_, he replaces his tongue with his fingers. When his mouth is on you his fingers knead and pull at your flesh and his fingernails bite your skin and it's -

Stupidly good. Like you're being split open but it doesn't hurt. Your mouth is open like it's trying to mimick his, drooling onto the pillow. Eyes unseeing. Plunged down so far you feel like you'll never surface again. You don't need to. He told you, didn't he? He's got you. He won't ever let you go.

"Baby, you okay?" he whispers, spreading his fingers apart inside you as he drags them out, playing with you. You can't actually find the language to reassure him - you can only vocalize, a needy urgent noise. "Tell me."

_"More,"_ you slur out, squirming. He closes his fingers and pushes them deeper, kissing your flanks. "_Please_." His breath is harsh and ragged.

You can't see your dick, at this angle, so you don't get to observe him stroking you, but you don't need the visual. A burning brand, agonizing in its intensity, he pumps his fist around you and it dances on the edge of pain. You're babbling senseless pleas that serve only to communicate want - nothing intelligible, only desire.

"Come on," Jake breathes against your lower back, plunging his fingers all the way in. "Let me watch you."

You can feel his face pressed against your skin, vaguely sense his line of sight. When you come, you know what he's watching: you slamming down around his fingers, the way your back arches and balls tighten and toes spasm against the sheets, the way your shoulderblades scrunch together and distort the planes of your back. The knowledge is like a chemical burn in your blood, a fully-aroused misery. You can't believe he's giving this to you.

"All right?" Jake is asking, dragging his fingers back and forth inside you, checking how sensitive you are. You moan, dazed, body trembling. "_God,_ you're gorgeous."

"On - on my back?" you mumble, managing to turn your head and look in his general direction.

"Of course, love," he tells you, leaning over you, pressing a kiss to your cheekbone. You can't seem to find the leverage on your own - he helps you roll over, away from the patch where your semen spilled.

You've got enough strength in your post-orgasm baby-deer-legs to wrap one of them around his waist. A pleading gesture. You can see his erection. And you've been so good. "Please," you breathe. You're sure your face is oozing naked greed. "I want you."

Jake laughs - it's a delighted infectious noise, you grin on automatic to hear it, wide and easy. "Yeah?" he asks you, smoothing your damp hair off your forehead.

"Yeah."

"So good for me," he murmurs in return. Lube takes a minute, and then he's sliding in - he doesn't need to hold you open, you're still so relaxed. Instead he laces his fingers with yours and presses your hands to the sheets. You like this position best, next to riding him: you like seeing his face, letting him do all the work of fucking you, like the way everything else in the world fades off the edge of the horizon into an indistinct haze.

Today you're going further, and further, and further off. Everything feels sweet and momentous. Every sensation is a fresh wave breaking against your skin: distinct and new.

You aren't even hard - you don't feel any particular desire to be. You only want to clutch him close and make him feel good. Your head is a perfectly still pond, a gently growing fractal, an arctic snowfield - drenched in a serenity you can't name. Peaceful, the way temples and churches are peaceful. This is the center of things; you have found it. Everything is easy.

And he's so beautiful above you, this vulnerable creature of flesh and bone, who wants you so dearly and loves you so much. You kiss at his throat, coax him deeper and deeper, dig your nails into his back and purr.

"- come for me?" you request, soft and low and barely audible into his ear, as he pistons into you furiously. His noises are perfect. His eyes are wide and reverent; he kisses your breath away, makes sparks dance in your eyes, and obliges you.

* * *

It's a long time, sprawled against each other in bed, before that buzz starts to fade.

You stroke Jake's skin and he holds you close, and you murmur nonsense to each other while you recover.

It's only in the shower washing up, giddy and light, that you start to laugh. "God, that was," you start, and then can't finish because he's laughing too.

"By crickey," he agrees, and that sets you off again, and you both get soap in your eyes but you couldn't possibly mind. Wet and clean, leaning against each other. Things are going to be okay. Your whole stomach is full of seltzer, or something equally fizzing and joyous; you kiss his face again and again, because it's perfect and yours for kissing and you love Jake more than you love anything else in the universe, and he lays soft kisses against your neck and collarbones for much the same reason.

By the time you're done the bathroom is full of steam; toweling your hair dry, nuzzling his face against your nape he whispers, _I love you_. You lean back into him, shutting your eyes, and tell him to say it again, and oh, he's beautiful when he laughs.

"I love you," you tell him that evening when you're in bed, and you're sure he's already asleep.

Jake smiles, and draws you closer.


	5. adonis

Dirk is on the roof that Sunday when you get home, sparring empty air and moving through sword forms like a gust of smoke, an electric afterimage in the stifling heat. You could almost believe he was a mirage if it weren't for the sweat, flung from his body and spattering the concrete, dark flecks that evaporate in minutes.

His body is beautiful the way a sword or any instrument of pure purpose must be: graceful, deadly, thrumming with intent.

Back when you were settling into the place, Dirk decided his half of the rooftop was an open-air gym; he was used to training on concrete. But your half is a garden, terracotta pots and greenery, hoses and bags of soil.

And in the middle, a picnic table. The umbrella is open, providing a little shade, and the August sun is brutal. Sky cloudless, very little breeze. So blue it aches and so bright you have to squint.

You've only been up here for a minute or two but the ice cooler is already sweating as much as Dirk is, condensation pearling against the lid and sides, puddling by your feet.

In summary: the flat was empty and you went looking, and now you've found him, and you've nothing to do. So you sit down, pop the cap off a brown lager, and watch him.

... _Damn. Splendid_, you think, a grin tugging your mouth lopsided. A fresh heat simmers in your belly, unfurling like catching flame.

Item of importance: Dirk hasn't noticed you yet. It was a long, long time before you could walk into a room and Dirk wouldn't notice. He must be aware of you right now, in a peripheral sense, but you don't trip the wire anymore. No klaxon.

(Second item of importance: Dirk is no longer waiting, breath held, for something to try to kill him.)

The metal whirr of his blade through the air, the scuff of his shoes on the concrete - it isn't for survival, it's because he likes it. You drink in your beer and the way he flits about, no pall of gloom to slow him down.

_... Ah._ Caught sight of you at last.

Even at this distance - ten yards or so? - you see him jolt, pause. Breathe. Then sheathing the blade, tucking it away in his sylladex. And then - as he approaches, lanky and dripping sweat - the thing that adds another dollop of petrol to the fire, gives you the sudden urge to sweep him off his feet and give him the old welcome-home-sailor. He pulls his shades off without even pausing, setting them on the table.

"Hi. When did you get home?" he murmurs, eyes glued to your beer for a minute before he can drag them up to your face. (And there they are, his orange pair, blinking in the shade after so much sunlight.)

You try not to be distracted by the sweat sliding down his neck. "Quarter past, I think. I put away the groceries." (_So there's no rush. So take your time cooling off._) Dirk's brow furrows.

"Sorry. I didn't... I don't think I heard you coming in."

"Oh - no, don't be. You looked like you were having fun."

"... Yeah," Dirk agrees after some quiet deliberation, chin dipping in a small nod. The corner of his mouth twitches up - that familiar awkward half-smile, stuck between happiness and the urge to hide it. (Later. Later you'll pull him the rest of the way.) "I was."

You hold up a bottle of orange juice in a meaningful, _remember-to-rehydrate-after-strenuous-exercise, mind-your-electrolytes way_, all smiles. Dirk's face turns a bit pink across his cheekbones when he reaches out and accepts it, twisting the cap off and sipping.

"You can sit down," you suggest, taking another long swig of your now-substantially-warmer beer. There's a second seat across the table, but Dirk continues to stand, shifting from one foot to the other, eyes on your feet and the melting ice in the cooler.

"... But I'll stick to you," Dirk says.

"... Good," you breathe in a rasp much lower than you intended. _ Yeah. Good._ "Hop to it, then."

A glimpse, then, of that soft wide smile you hold so dear. Eyes crinkling at the corners as he tries not to laugh. "Yes, boss," Dirk deadpans, and straddles your thighs, arms draping over your shoulders.

You aren't really sure how your hand found its way to the curve of his ass so quickly but you squeeze and he makes a soft little startled noise - _oh_ \- and your mouth finds his mouth and you're home, and he's right here in your arms, and all is right with the world.

Soft thrum of his still-elevated heartbeat. The smell of sweat and Dirk and sunscreen lotion - _oh, good boy, he remembered to apply it_. Utterly pleased with him. He is solid and compact in your arms, and his weight rests on your body and you are giddy about gravity, if only for the way this feels.

Your joined mouths taste of orange juice and beer and it's revolting. You appear to have mutually decided to solve the issue with a cleansing round of tonsil hockey. Dirk is such a sporting fellow about these things.

"- You're a little too hot," you say, forehead pressed to his a few minutes later.

"Who, me, officer?" Dirk mumbles, the tip of his pink tongue running over his lips. His hands are latched together behind your neck. Yours are cradling his spine. Dirk doesn't seem feverish yet, just - _hahah_ \- happy to see you.

"And much too handsome." He can't keep up the leer when you sweettalk him, although he makes a strong attempt.

"... That means the beer's free, right?" he asks, and flutters his eyelashes at you.

\- Ah. Another lurch of desire in the pit of your stomach. You aren't sure when you noticed, but lately, Dirk has been asking for your permission to drink - in his backwards stubborn Dirkish way. It's - really cute, and you aren't sure why. But it is. How delightful, that he_ wants_ you to decide. (That he trusts in your decisions.)

"Let's get you hosed down and dried off, first, and then we'll talk," you murmur, fingers slipping under his shirt, caressing his backbone.

The grateful look he gives you for an instant, before the artificial pout - the flash of a car mirror hitting sunlight, brief and blinding. "_No fun allowed_," he mutters into your ear.

You press your lips to his temple. "_None whatsoever_," you whisper back.

The actual hose-down (_soaping him up, rinsing him off, his fingers rubbing your scalp as he works the shampoo into a lather_) is a brisk and short affair, but it feels almost as intimate as the sex.

Bracing his back against the wall and locking his thighs around your waist, the little gasp of surprise when you step back and his abs flex, keeping him upright, barely supported by your hands. Arms around your neck, the squeeze when he pushes himself up and the tremor when he eases back down. The way he tilts his chin up, up, back, and the spray of the showerhead hits his bare neck; mouth open, eyes shut, panting.

The foolish besotted things that come tumbling out of your mouth.

Afterwards you bask in a companionable silence, Dirk sipping water and sorting mail while you putter about making sandwiches.

These are your days, now, dawn and noon and dusk; at times so perfect you wonder if you're dreaming.

* * *

_summer heat cicada buzzing, the ache. sleeping in the shade I dream and of you until to my arms to me you return bright and glittering. was it not ever thus? to me to me always returning, wild bird accustomed now to eat from human hands. hushed and hesitant but will not now fly from only towards. (it was with honey I caught you, not vinegar.)_

_oh and oh how lovely you are mouth and tongue soft all things yielding-soft when I am kissing you - right here safe. warm. mine. how lovely (mine) when you are as you ought to pliant-yielding be for me. for me all only me you are._

_in my in dreams you are christ you are and brow beset with thorns and you let me one at a time let me pull them out. blood saltwater and then it's done, all better. my hands red with you. _

_thorn after thorn at a time I pluck them out and clean, clean and whole you are new flesh wet and scarless. oh for your bloody brow, damp eyes, only kisses. only my touch my creature, I shall draw every one out and gently I will gentle you._

_your skin weds mine._

_let me only. here and here and this and with these I marry you to me. all and all right? for you only._

_you are for kissing this and here and here as well for kissing. soft for me sweet-alone good for me you are. _

_fly closer. _

_soft and yes soft you are touching to the touch (mine) and yes good you are yes you are mine my good my tender thing. my hands gentle see yes gentle. never thorns for you never._

_oh tender thing, you are not for thorns._

* * *

Sunday night, after dinner. Something more prolonged, like a chess game: Dirk rubs your leg with his foot under the table while discussing rap albums, you crowd him against the sink pretending to help wash the dishes, he pets the hair at the nape of your neck when you're both sprawled on the couch and distracts you from the shitty TV, and so on and so forth, and eventually you're in bed, and he's wiggling underneath you while you fuck him, just the way he likes it.

You like it best when you keep your wits enough to watch Dirk fall to pieces, watch bliss transform him.

The knowledge that he's _safe_ and _yours_ and numb with pleasure. You hunger for him, yes, but also to control for a short time what he's allowed to feel, what he's allowed to experience. To know with your ears and eyes and hands and tongue that he is here, and yours, and that it's good for him.

Know that while you hold him, nothing else can.

You want to construct for him an Eden. Hold off the tide, so he can catch his breath. Silence the roar and give him sleep without nightmares. Build him a future and take him by the wrist and lead him away, a step at a time, from the jagged edge of his wounds.

It translates to the way you touch him, look at him, hold him; to the way you think and breathe and exist. The desire to take care of the people you love; the desire to wrap around them like a living shield, to lead them to a place where they can walk barefoot without care, never having to watch the ground for shards of glass.

Always, in the back of your head, that persistent draw: _what is Dirk doing now?_ How can you undo every knot of tension in his body, how can you feed him nectar and ambrosia, how can you own a little more of him, taking whatever he offers to you a sliver at a time? A yearning to possess the way you think gods must yearn; to seize your beloved by the heart and lead him away to paradise.

* * *

_my eros my apollo, oh; golden boy the world tilts for you. dream or waking alike you warm to touches, mine._

_"_when?_" (when, the thorns.)_

_never, never I tell him and "_when?_" again, he asks again._

_without words only skin wed to skin I show him: never, by hands by silent mouth by touch: never, never, and still the boy cries when? - oh, my tender-broken thing, never. _

_scale by scale the old maille sloughs off and beneath it you are tender mine and tender. forever, I will outlive iron I will outlive rust and this I promise you: never._

_you are not for that. _

* * *

You know that he's always waiting for the other shoe to drop, somewhere deep and byzantine below the surface. The pessimist confronted with a good thing that keeps on being good, and doesn't seem to flag or falter. Dirk is better now; he spends less time anticipating the end, more time secure and solid in your possession. You like it. You like it when he forgets to worry about anything, and lets you make him feel good. Like it when he lies back like this, ribcage heaving, lips wet and open as he breathes, and blimey isn't it _something_ that he still goes loopy just from your kisses? You would kiss him -

"_Forever, darling, forever_," you murmur into his skin. Two fingers inside him, feeling the rings of muscle tense and then relax, accepting. Warm and slick and _tight_ and his face is the shade of wild roses, pink and flushing. It's so pretty, he's just so pretty - handsome, you try to say, because you know he's got all these ideas about what men are supposed to look like and what sort of adjectives are good ones but you can't help it. Your boy is _gorgeous._ It ought to be a crime.

"Jake, uhhh... Jake, I need... _please_ hurry," Dirk slurs out, the heels of his feet digging into your hips, his cock flushed and dripping wet against his stomach. His jaw is slack, his body is laid out all yours to touch and have and kiss and keep and fuck, he's just - divine. Want to make him forget everything but this, the way it feels to be fucked nice and slow and easy and belong to you. Forget how to do anything but wrap his legs around your waist and urge you closer. "I'm - yeah - please, I wanna -"

"_Shhh, I've got you,"_ you tell him, low harsh rasp against his forehead. He makes a soft lovely noise in the back of his throat and pants, eyes half-shut, for breath; it wrenches at your arousal in a whole new way that that reassurance is enough to calm him down, restore the glassy peace in his expression. Such a good boy, so good for you. His hands are up by his shoulders, gripping the sheets and kneading at them; you didn't tell him to put his hands up, you don't even need to tie him down to keep him here like this. He laid back and spread his legs for you, long limbs relaxed against the bedsheets, while you were still in the doorway; you could have fainted dead away just seeing that, knowing it was for you, and you didn't even ask him to. Dirk surrendering to you will always do gigantic things to your libido. _Yours_, all yours. Perfect.

"Ah, ah,_ ah_ -" he pants when you slide the third finger in, and you push the hair off his damp forehead and press a kiss between his eyes and his smile is so soft and perfect, silent laughter, delight. Sucking his lower lip between your teeth until it's swollen and red like his - lovely - erection, just as wet, just as soft as he is inside, where you're stroking and rubbing and coaxing him to open up further, buried to your knuckles. A fierce, tender feeling rising in your chest; your lovely thing, your pretty boy, you'll never hurt him, you'll never let anything hurt him again - these are the moments you believe that's possible. Melting and sticky and sweet. Yours, yours, yours.

"So good, baby, so good for me," you croon, barely aware of what you're saying, only that your throat needs to make sounds of approval. "Perfect. So perfect. Good boy."

Dirk blinking away the wetness in his eyes, unable to stop smiling, knees twitching against your ribs. "Jake -" The little hitch of wide-eyed awe when you press in and rub circles over his prostate, slow and teasing. The way his mouth trembles and his adam's apple bobs in his throat. Looking up at you like you discovered electricity and nuclear fusion.

\- Only this, he should only ever feel this good. It was a bastard move of Aphrodite's to kidnap Adonis and keep him forever in her garden but you understand her feelings. A perfect vulnerable thing, got to lock it up in a tower, got to wrap it up in chains and keep it safe (because it's yours) and make sure, make absolutely sure that nothing ever hurts it again - and you resent every source of Dirk's suffering like a personal offense, a challenge to your godhood, a glove thrown. Want to possess every last atom of him. Want to keep him armorless and simple in your hands, under your body, as if you could protect him from the universe. Every soft spot defenseless because you are the defender; shield forgotten because you've become it. Jugular artery, femoral artery, soft white stomach. Yes. You understand Venus all too well.

"- just a little longer," you hear yourself murmuring, "just a little more, so I can look at you -"

Gulping for air and shaking like a leaf when you finally center yourself and push in, eyelids fluttering; his pulse hot and gripping you like his body never wants you to leave, and all Dirk does is coax you further in, closer, _here, have more of me, take all of this -_ it's difficult not to climax, you have to pause and catch your breath and kiss his cheeks and nose and chin and mouth like a mad desperate man. Nothing feels more right. Nothing feels as good as this does. Sinking deep into a simple hungry part of yourself: _yes mine good mine lovely perfect thing, mine all mine forever._

Keeping him here, in the gauze-wrapped sanctuary where only you and he exist. Dragging him through wave after wave of hot, liquid need, pushing in and drawing back only to return, here and solid. The place where you own him the most, and you are so careful, make him buck and howl and cry with how good it feels, brushing off anything else. So you _have_ him, so he knows you have him, so he sees how nice it feels to be tamed and kept _(by you only by you only ever you)_, persuade him that it's good. Make him see how lovely it is.

God almighty he's perfect, he feels like being home again, like cold water after a drought, like hot cocoa in winter. More more more. More, further, even more. All of him. You want every last particle and here, here you have it.

Drowsy and dreamlike, reaching between your stomachs and feeling the mess of pre-ejaculate, sliding it around his stomach, wrapping your hand around him and rubbing your thumb tenderly against the dripping tip. On another plane of reality. Lost in the rhythm of in, out, in, harder, more. Good and yours and perfect.

_\- come for me, go ahead, you're so pretty when you do, baby, I love it when you -_

The surge of his body, arms wrapping around your neck, that broken beautiful cry. The paroxysms, the way his whole body surrenders, toes curling, everything drowned in pleasure. How he clamps down around you impossibly tight and the muscles ripple, holding you in. Bodies inseparable, wedded at every joint.

Your last conscious thought: _\- yes_.

You give him this.

* * *

_oh lover, oh mine and good and yes and lovely. every breath mine every inhale exhale repeat. sound of heaven falling closer, noise of a vast wind - fly higher with me for in my arms. within them you are everything are mine and perfect. symphony coda repeat._

_beautiful creature:_

_you are not for thorns; you are for marrying._


End file.
